CAPTAIN SPEKE'S DISCOVERY. 315 



Fate allows him to discover ? May he not expect, 

 like the general of an army, at least to share in 

 the glory won by the arms of his lieutenants ? 

 Capt. Speke was provided with a gang of 34^ 

 guards, servants, and porters : he much wanted 

 the little Siiaykh Said, but the latter wept privily 

 at the prospect of meeting death by want and 

 hardship, and I allowed him to remain at Kazeh, 

 lest his intrigues might work mischief. Though 

 my companion was a match for ' Sidi Bombay,' 

 he was a child in the hands of the trickv Arab. 



Captain Speke made a most spirited march. 

 On August 3rd he sighted the ' Xyanza Lake,' to 

 which he gave 3740 feet of altitude ; and he re- 

 turned, after covering in 47 days (June 9th to 

 August 25th) 300 direct and 425 indirect geo- 

 graphical miles. He brought back the inform- 

 ation that this great equatorial reservoir was 

 known to the people as Nyanza, a generic term 

 which, like Xyassa, means a sea, a stream, or a 

 lake. Standing 250 feet above its level, he saw 

 20 to 22 (not ' over a hundred ') miles of surface, 

 hardly enough to command a liquid horizon be- 

 tween the islets which he called Mazita, Ukerewe, 

 and Majid. 



Presently, by comparing Arab accounts, I 

 found in Capt. Speke's diary sundry uncertainties 



